More than two billion people in the world today identify as followers of Jesus. This includes a fair percentage of inhabitants of the USA, currently the world’s most powerful nation, its most influential via film, TV, social media and popular music, and home of some of the world’s richest people. My country, Australia, still has […]
Child sexual abuse is a terrible crime and rightly loathed by most people. And churches have, tragically, been home to some of the worst offenders. The Australian Government set up a Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse almost 5 years ago. (A Royal Commission is a judicial process that has wide powers, […]
We all know that the world is a very unequal place. Anyone reading this is probably not doing too badly, but billions struggle to make a living. But you may not be aware that, by some measures at least, inequality is increasing.
Photo: Slaves Waiting to be sold in Richmond, Virginia, painted in 1861 from an 1853 sketch. Wikipedia. The world has changed enormously in my lifetime. One thing that I never knew as a child but which seems to characterise the present age, is international terrorism. Terrorism, via car bomb, motor vehicle driven into crowds, gun […]
Francis Chan was just a name to me. He was a famous and respected megachurch pastor, speaker and author, but although I had heard his name, I knew nothing more. In 2010 he did the unthinkable, and resigned from the leadership of “his” 5,000 strong megachurch in California, but I remained oblivious – you can’t […]
How do people mature? Does it just happen automatically as we grow, or are there things we can do to aid maturity? And do christians mature in any different way from other people?
Christianity is all about helping people change their minds and behaviour, right? We want to see people choosing to follow Jesus, then growing in their understanding of what that means and how they can follow him better. Don’t we? So why are we still using approaches that have been shown to be very ineffective?
Have you ever wondered how christians, who believe more or less the same things about Jesus and God, believe widely divergent things about politics and public morality? Specifically, if you are more conservative politically, do you wonder how more liberal christians can possibly think and vote as they do? And if you are more liberal […]
The church in first world countries, as a whole, is losing ground, neither making converts nor making an impact. There are many ideas, many books, talks and blog posts, outlining the problems and the way forward, as someone sees it. But I recently came across a brief overview that I think provides a better understanding […]
Truth and love are both basic virtues for christians. The Bible tells us God is love, and Jesus is the truth (1 John 4:8, John 14:6). But sometimes truth and love seem to get in each other’s way. Or maybe it is what we think is the truth and what we think is loving. But […]